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The Easter Weekend Plan - How Can Driving from Sydney to Brisbane Be Fun, Safe and Relaxed

Did you know that Australia has a very few public (national holidays)?

In fact, public holidays are so few (especially from where I work) that long weekends here are very rare and often celebrated. Case in point, the Easter Weekend.

In the Philippines, we commemorate the Holy Week with Holy Thursday and Good Friday as non-working holidays, we use it as a time to reflect and repent of our sins. Here, the holy week is called the Easter Weekend, with Good Friday and Easter Monday as public holidays. The mood is festive. Apart from Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, hot cross buns everywhere, you'd see happy, very excited people who are eager to spend time with family, friends or with themselves.
Since I don't have that many holidays / annual leaves to savor, I asked my husband if we could travel to Brisbane this long weekend. I initially checked plane tickets online months ago, but because it is a public holiday, plane tickets are shy rocket high. We asked our lovely cousin, Rejoice who lives in Brisbane if it is possible doable to drive and she immediately gave her two thumbs up. Although driving from Sydney, New South Wales to Brisbane, Queensland takes 12 HOURS (as per the GPS), Ate Rejoice suggested an itinerary that will make our long drive more relaxed. At relaxed na ito sa lagay na ito.

Maps from Syndey To Brisbane and Coffs Harbour

Currently, Paolo is driving to Coffs Harbour - a suburb in NSW that is 540kms North from Sydney. We booked a hotel there, the Ibis Budget Hotel (Cost: $96/night booked through agoda.com). Ideally, the drive would only take us 6 hours approximately, but because of some traffic and numerous stopovers, we are still on the road (at 1:00AM) after leaving Sydney at 5:30PM today. We have stopped at Wyong to eat and made a couple of stops along the way.

This man is the hero. Drove 9 hours with the help of a caffeine and a noisy wife

Tomorrow, we shall be driving to Byron Bay, a beautiful coastal suburb in NSW that is 2 hours from Coffs Harbour. We shall be having brunch on the beach before we drive to Goldcoast, Queensland - for approximately 45 minutes. We will be checking in at Chateu Beachside Resort (cost: $130/night) and enjoy the sea, the sand and everything in Surfer's Paradise.

This is how Leon reacted when we told him we're going to a theme park

Come Saturday, we shall be going to Movie World, or Sea World, depending on Leon's mood - but not both. Afterward, we shall be driving to Brisbane for more than an hour to finally spend the Saturday and Sunday night in Ate Rejoice's residence, Ate has prepared a number of Easter activities for the kids which I'm sm sure the kids will enjoy. We will be touring Brissy (yes, Brissy, mate) on Sunday, as well.

Will probably spend Monday brekky in Brisbane and lunchy in Goldcoast (sorry I'm using the Aussie slangs that I learned from Leon) before we head back to Sydney straight. I really hope Paolo would be able to sustain and make it the rest of our trip, I don't have an Australian license yet so I am technically not allowed to drive.

Me taking a picture of him while he was taking my photo. True - Leon is a photgrapher in the making ;)

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed how I shared with you our Easter roadtrip plan. I am sharing with you the photos we took from last week's Sunday family day we spent in Hyde Park just to give you a feel of what might happen this long weekend - which will be picture taking on the most part. LOL

PS: I'm amazed at how big NSW is. We are on the road for 8 hours but we have driven a total of 500km already. The roads are big and wide and there are highways/motorways that allowed us to drive for 110km/hour straight.

Ang layo ng naabot ng 8 hours namin dito.

PPS: We just arrived in Coffs Harbour just now, past 2AM SYD time. So impressed with my husband. Hence I'm posting the most decent photo we had tonight.Cheers.

From a full-time career woman in the Philippiunes to a hands-on, stay-at-home mom in Australia. Follow our learnings, discoveries, adventures and misadventures as we start anew in the land down under!
Email me: rovieperalta@icloud.com